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Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Browned Butter Dark Chocolate Marshmallow Muffins #FoodieExtravaganza

Browned butter is the star ingredient in this sweet muffin but the brown sugar, dark chocolate and marshmallows add just the right amount of bitter and sweet.

The first time I ever heard the words browned butter, I was in college. My younger sister was dating a young man whose mother was born and raised in Germany. I don’t remember whether it was a special occasion or just a random meal, but afterwards my mother raved about the fresh green beans his mother had cooked with browned butter. They were apparently to die for.

Now, my mother is given to food superlatives so I took that accolade with a little grain of sea salt and forgot all about it. Or would have if she hadn't mentioned it several more times over the decades.

Fast forward more than 30 years and browned butter is all over the place. In savory dishes and sweet. One of my favorite bloggers, Kayle, The Cooking Actress, has recipe after recipe devoted to this wonderful ingredient. I have been dutifully bookmarking and drooling over them but had yet to take plunge. I discovered, with this muffin, that browned butter is indeed fabulous in baked goods, to die for even, and I am thinking green beans for dinner tonight, à la Mrs. Bosarge. Why did I wait so long? Are you still waiting? Dive right in!

Fair warning: Do NOT taste the batter. It's possible that you will not bother to bake muffins and your family will find you sitting in the kitchen, possessively hugging the mixing bowl and clutching a spoon, preheated oven abandoned. And then *queue dramatic music*: You will have to share.

Brown your butter, if you haven’t done so already. Kayle has great instructions right here, so I refer you to her site. Just follow this link: How to brown butter.

Chop the dark chocolate into little chunks and set aside a small handful for topping the muffins before baking.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together your flour, salt, two sugars and baking powder.

Whisk the cooled browned butter, eggs, vanilla extract and milk in a smaller mixing bowl. If your milk and eggs are quite cold, the butter will probably try to solidify again. Just keep whisking and it will break into little bitty pieces and get rather fluffy. This is not a big deal.

Foodie Extravaganza celebrates obscure food holidays or shares recipes with the same ingredient or theme every month.

Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook group Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you!

Awwww I am so flattered! You're a sweetie pie! And omg don't you just wanna live eating nothing but things made with browned butter from now on?? Agh I'm so addicted! I love how you made my cookies into muffins, GENIUS-so cool!

Because it's a well-known fact that if you are American you have to like chocolate and marshmallows! It's on the citizenship exam. Thanks for your kind words, Jamie! A compliment from you is a great compliment indeed.

Well, let me just say that I didn't have any green beans so, tonight for dinner, I made cauliflower with browned butter to which I added garlic after the browning. Amazing! So the answer to that question is YES! I DO.

STACY!!! I have all the ingredients to make these!!! Now if only I can squeeze some time in today so that I can be in browned butter dark chocolate marshmallow muffin nirvana. I'm indebted to Kayle for life for introducing me to browned butter. These look fabulous and I love that you basically baked a s'mores in muffin form (because muffins = breakfast and I can start my day off by eating these).

Oh MAN. These look incredible! And yes, browned butter is indeed liquid gold (whatever colour it really happens to be, ha!). I both love and hate this recipe (the latter because I'd probably eat the entire batch so I really shouldn't make them!). Thanks to you and Kayle for the inspiration lovely! xx

Stacy, you are so talented! My husband has just looked over my shoulder and commented that you take great photos.....that comment translated clearly means "I'd sure like to taste those scrummy muffins!!" This was also after I had read out a few more of your muffin recipes including the raspberry Nutella filled ones and your honeycomb candy recipe! Thank you for sharing your passion and dedication to blogging all thing food related. X

Cooking for people I love, creating deliciousness out of fresh ingredients, browsing through cookbooks for inspiration, perusing grocery shelves for choice items and writing about my expat life enriched by food. That's what I do here.